23 August 2015 - Back to School

We've been taking advantage of lots of baby holding time since we got here.

Our house finally has a foundation! No walls yet, but hey, it's a start.

You may notice in the picture above that Madeline's arm looks like it has a cast on it. It's actually not a cast, it's a bandage. I didn't get any pictures of the incident, but her bandage is covering some elbow road rash she got when we hit a deer on my motorcyle on Thursday. We were going to Aunt Tiffany's house in West Jordan for Madeline and Meghan to have a sleepover before the school year started. We were almost there, just about in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple on Bangerter Highway when a large buck jumped into traffic and eventually right into our path. I had gotten the bike slowed down but was unable to avoid hitting the deer. We were very blessed to not crash, but just as I was about to get the bike stopped, the deer rolled under my front wheel and I had to lay the bike on its right side. Both Madeline and I had scraped elbows, hers was worse than mine, but we otherwise survived without much damage. I can't say the same for the bike, which may or may not be salvageable, but in the grand scheme of things, that is not what matters. We definitely had guardian angels around us that evening. I was in too much shock to think to take pictures of the motorcycle laying on the dead deer, so I can only immortalize the event by describing it. I'm just glad everyone was OK. After getting checked out in the ambulance, we were able to continue on to Tiffany's house so the sleepover could still happen.

The ever-serious new driver on her way to her first day of school.

All three girls are attending Freedom Preparatory Academy in Provo this year.

Madeline is in 6th grade this year.

Emily is starting 8th grade.

Our cousin Hannah is starting school as well. She arrived this week from Virginia to start at BYU. On Saturday we had a cookout at Canyon Glen in Provo Canyon, and the girls cooled their heels in the Provo River.

Summer may be winding down, school may be starting up, but we're not done having fun yet.

16 August 2015 - Jessica's Birthday Outdoors

To celebrate Jessica's birthday, Grandma and Grandpa Phil rented two cabins near Jordanelle Reservoir between Heber and Park City. We took the boat out one day on Deer Creek and the next day on Jordanelle. The second day, the girls all learned to water ski. This is Jessica...

Emily...

and Madeline...

Of course there was some aggressive tube riding too.

At the cabins on Monday night, Jessica opened presents. She got Minion Twinkies from Aunt Jen.

And a mushroom pinata from mommy.

Phil proved he can still cut up the water at age 65.

I can still do it too, but 20+ years younger. I can only hope I can still do this 20 years from now.

After a couple of days in the mountains, we came back down to Orem. It turned out that our good friends from Pennsylvania were in town visiting family for the summer. Emily and Madeline had been especially good friends with Emma Stephens, so we got the kids together to play a couple of times.

This is us with Emma's mom Ashley.

One of the things we were able to do with them was a trip to Rock Canyon behind the Provo Temple where we spent a morning rappelling. Here is Grandpa Phil and Grandma taking a turn after all the kids had taken several rides down the rope.

On Saturday we also re-connected with Michael and Shauna Cleverly who are friends of ours from college. Michael and I were in the MTC together and though we were never companions we crossed paths regularly on our missions. We also roomed together at BYU before Michael and Shauna got married. It's been a long time since we've had time to get together, and it was awesome to get caught up. It was almost like we picked up where we left off more than a decade ago.

9 August 2015 - First Week in Utah

When we arrived in Utah this week, we moved in with Joanne's mom and stepdad in Orem. We're staying in their basement until our house is ready -- we're told it should be done around Halloween. We stopped at a 7-Eleven and they had Simpsons donuts, so I had to get one to go with my Slurpee.

 

After three long weeks of waiting and much patience, Joanne finally got to hold baby Adrienne for the first time.

It seemed like we celebrated Jessica's Sweet 16 birthday for about a week. It came shortly after we arrived in Utah. Here's Jessica with her Reese's Cheesecake birthday cake.

2 August 2015 - Leaving Idaho

For our final week in Idaho, we decided to have a little fun. We took a day and went to Wahooz, which is just a family fun park in suburban Boise. Here's Emily getting ready to burn some rubber in her super fast race car.

We also played a little mini golf, rode bumper boats, ate pizza and did a roller coaster simulator thing about 10 times.

On Wednesday, Madeline had her last day of karate. It was a bit emotional, made more so by them giving her an honorary blue belt. This is the next rank she's working toward, and she's pretty close, so they gave her a belt as something to remember them by and as something to work toward completing in her new home town.

On Friday I took one last ride with my gang. We rode about 100 miles up into the west central mountains of Idaho to a place called Warm Lake. It was a beautiful ride through the mountains.

We also passed one more milestone before moving away -- Jessica is now an officially licensed driver.

After all was said and done, it was time to head to Utah. Since our new house isn't ready yet, we left most of our stuff in storage, bringing only a 6x12 U-haul trailer with the motorcyle and few other personal belongings inside it. We had spend the whole month of July at Aunt Kathy's house, and were extremely grateful for her care and hospitality for us. It was tough to say goodbye because we loved our time in Idaho, but we also have much to look forward to in Utah.

26 July 2015 - Joanne's Birthday & Silver City

For Joanne's birthday I took her to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Boise. Tasty steak, and a "free" key lime pie with personalized message. If you've ever been to Ruth's Chris, you now what I mean about "free" dessert.

After our ample dinner, we walked a bit of it off by going to Julia Davis Park and walking through the Rose Garden and hearing part of a concert in the park.

No birthday would be complete without a customized cake from the girls.

On Friday we took a drive to the ghost town of Silver City, ID. It is about 60 miles from Boise, but is very difficult to get to. The pavement ends about 25 miles before you reach the city, and it's mostly a 4x4 road for the last stretch. Here are all the girls in front of the old Masonic Lodge.

This is a panorama of the town. During it's prime time, it was the county seat of Owyhee County, and millions of dollars of silver and gold were dug from the hills surrounding the town. Now the summer population is about 100 people, and the winter population is just 2.

This is the wood burning stove in the dining room of the Idaho Hotel, one of only two businesses left in the town. Much of the hotel is still original, which means it looks and feels like its falling down.

On Saturday after our adventure in Silver City, the girls had their last swim meet in Idaho. This was a smaller and lower key event at the Caldwell Y. The girls did really great and improved their times yet again.

I had bought Jessica a new racing suit a few months earlier and she liked it so much, I got the younger two girls new racing suits as well. Here they are with their teammate Trinidy.

19 July 2015 - Definitely Summer

This week, with our impending departure from Idaho, I took one of my final rides with my biker buddies. We rode into Oregon and up into the Whitman National Forest. This is where we stopped for brunch after about three hours of riding. It was in the mountains of eastern Oregon, a very old place and very cool. Decent food.

This is a terrible picture to represent what we were doing here. Jessica attended a type of youth conference this week at Boise State called the Boise Youth Spectacular. It is a great three day event and the kids love it when they go. This year, Joanne and I volunteered to be food servers, and we spent two hours one afternoon giving pizza to more than 2,000 kids. The picture is of the main part of Boise State's campus, but it didn't turn out very well -- it just looks like a picture of a street.

This weekend the girls had their Summer Championship swim meet. Over two days of competition we had a number new personal best times and even a couple of heat winners, which was awesome since this meet featured the toughest competition the region has to offer.